


Monster

by Heavenward (PreludeInZ)



Series: Thunderbirds Prompts [8]
Category: Thunderbirds
Genre: Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-25
Updated: 2015-06-25
Packaged: 2018-04-06 02:13:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 692
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4204068
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PreludeInZ/pseuds/Heavenward
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>ANONYMOUS ASKED: JOHN AND GORDON, WITH THE WORD MONSTER, IF YOU'RE STILL TAKING PROMPTS :)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Monster

There are six years and Virgil in between Gordon and John, and most of the year Scott and John are away at the GDF’s Military Academy. Scotty’s sixteen and  _thriving_  and when he’s home school is all he talks about, and he only ever wants to get back, get graduated, and move on to the USAF Academy, where his name’s been down since he was Gordon’s age.

Gordon’s age is eight, and this makes John fourteen, and he isn’t thriving  _at all_. Home from school with Scott, John’s worn out and frazzled and retreats to his room almost as soon as he’s in the door, aching for the solitude he lost in boarding school. It’s not the schoolwork that’s too much (though John’s usually sterling academics are suffering too), it’s the environment. Dorms and crowded classrooms and rigid structure and rules, and Scott outshining him at every turn.

“Let him be,” Grandma Tracy advises Gordon and Alan (five years old and impossible to separate from whatever brother is his favourite that week), when they’re sick of hearing about Scott’s posse of friends back at school, and have handed him off to infinitely tolerant Virgil, because they want to play with John. “Johnny’s gotta recharge his batteries a bit, and he’ll play with you when he feels better.”

Gordon and Alan permit John a very generous ten minutes to feel better. Then the pair of them creep upstairs and push open the door of John’s room at the end of the hallway.

It’s the middle of the day, but the room is dark, the lights off and the blinds drawn. Alan still sleeps with a nightlight and he makes the tiniest whimper and latches onto Gordon’s sleeve. It’s chilly in here, too. John’s got the fan on full blast and as far as Gordon can tell, his big brother is buried beneath a heap of blankets on the bed.

“Johnny?” Gordon whispers, because the room seems to demand whispers.

There’s a long pause, and then the voice from the bed is muted, sleepy. “Nnn. What?”

“You wanna play, Johnny?”

John’s strawberry-blonde head pokes out from beneath the blankets and his eyes are red-rimmed and dark-circled. “No. I mean, sorry, no thanks. Gordon. Alan. Maybe later. Go play with Scott.”

Emboldened by the newly apparent presence of their second oldest brother, Alan pipes up, “We wanna play with  _you_ , Johnny. Gramma says you need your batteries. I’ve  _got_ batteries, they’re in my fire truck, you can have ‘em.”

This, at least, gets a tired laugh and Gordon and Alan cross the room to clamber onto the bed. John scoots over to make room for Alan to flop on top of the pillows, and for Gordon to sit cross-legged next to him. “Scotty says you got monsters for teachers,” Gordon offers, conciliatory. “D’you really?”

“Wow,” Alan adds solemnly, blue eyes wide. “ _Monsters_.”

“The whole  _school’s_ a monster, if you ask me,” John answers, and the teenage melodrama is lost on the two youngest. He groans and burrows back under the blankets again. Then, muffled. “I dunno, guys. I feel all chewed up. Come back later, okay? Maybe we’ll play after…after dinner or something. Sorry.”

“Can we stay, John? We’ll be quiet.” Gordon looks over his shoulder towards the door. “Scott’s being  _boring_.”

“I can go get my firetruck,” Alan offers, ever helpful.

John shrugs (or Gordon thinks he does, anyway, the pile of blankets shuffles a little, looks like another sort of monster, swallowing pale, skinny John). “S’fine.”

So they stay. And, gradually, just by being little boys and talking earnestly about how much they’ve missed John and how school’s been for Gordon and how kindergarten’s been for Alan, they coax their big brother out from under the blankets, and get a smile back on his face.

And when Gordon, dutiful and unable to keep his mouth shut, makes his report to their father about the existence of monsters in John’s life, John’s next semester starts at a much smaller technical school, with far fewer rules and far fewer monsters.

Gordon doesn’t tolerate monsters. Especially not ones that take bites out of his brothers.


End file.
